The Commission has adopted the fifth annual Work Programme under the European Defence Fund (EDF), allocating over €1 billion to defence collaborative research and development projects.
With the 2025 EDF Work Programme, the Commission unlocks significant additional funding to support the development of critical defence technologies and capabilities – allocating around €100 million each in critical fields such as ground combat, space, air and naval combat, as well as energy resilience and environmental transition.
This new Programme supports the development of critical defence technologies and capabilities required in line with the EU capability priorities agreed by member states and further elaborated in the Strategic Compass. It launches nine competitive calls for proposals addressing 31 topics. Calls for proposals will prepare the ground for a wide range of enabling technologies related to autonomous triage and evacuation of injured personnel, multifunctional information distribution system, human-AI dialogue, chiplets for defence applications, soldier systems, and great-depth enabling technologies.
The programme foresees a budget of around €100 million to address future challenges in the fields of ground combat, space, air combat and energy resilience and environmental transition. Furthermore, more than €40 million of EU funding is allocated to boosting research in critical areas, such as cyber, naval combat, underwater warfare, simulation and training, as well as advanced passive and active sensors – both in current and future operational contexts.
More information is available in a press release and a dedicated factsheet, online.
